Preliminary Programme

This paper draws on social and political histories of media and cultural tourism in, and of, Scotland. Examining the socio-historical context of the 1930s Highlands and Islands as bound within the ‘the whirling vortex of modernity’ we draw on both professional and personal knowledges of Eilean Donan Castle, and the highlands and islands region, as the prism for this analysis. In addition, the rich archive resources of popular and specialist publications, screen archive and policy documentation will all be referred to. The castle operates as a rich and complex site of real and imagined histories that interface with a collective of romantic and privileging discourses that position, perform and politicise Scotland more broadly as place, people and culture. In 1911, Lt Colonel John Macrae-Gilstrap bought the island of Eilean Donan and set about rebuilding the ruined castle. Taking just over twenty years to reconstruct, the castle would become in time an iconic landmark, intensely exacerbated via global mediatization and an enhanced destination tourism policy. The paper proposes to examine two key moments in the castle’s historical imagining. The first is media and cultural tourism narratives surrounding the opening of the ‘rebuilt’ castle in 1932 and the 1930s nation-building context of this seminal timeframe in Scotland’s political and cultural development. The second frame explores the post-1990s film associations of Highlander, The World is not Enough and an intensification of imagineering of the site as ‘Scotland’. Eilean Donan’s promotion and its appropriation speaks to both the hyperbole and hyper-reality of an intense ‘re-branding’ of Scotland that nevertheless continues to ‘romance the nation’ in tandem with an increased collective cultural nationalist confidence of Scotland’s political road to devolution. Carrying a powerful and growing representational energy that resonates down to the present day, Eilean Donan showcases the immense potential of Scotland’s historiography and cultural capital whilst presenting a timely example of competing tensions of Scottish and British nationalist and hybridising configurations and communications. (Show less)

The European region in 19th- and early 20th-century culture and literature has traditionally been identified with conservatism, resistance to change, and either antagonism to nationalisation (Donovan 2010; Crow 2002) or support of nation-building (Augusteijn & Storm 2012: 6). What scholars have hitherto overlooked are the significant transnational dimensions of the region in this period: representations of interactions between local communities and the global in the form of multiculturalism and (re-)migration, the fascination with regions in countries elsewhere in Europe as well as the transnational circulation of images and narratives about regions in the press through cultural transfer (Welsch 1999; Stockhurst 2010).

This paper will examine these underresearched transnational dimensions of cultural conceptualisations of the region by looking at Ireland’s Connemara as a case study, exploring how Ireland’s West was conceptualised in relation to globalisation, and was (re-)configured elsewhere in Europe. It will do so by focusing on representations of Connemara in the hugely popular mass medium of the illustrated periodical during the 1880s and 1890s—a period in which the rural regions in the west of Ireland were marked by agrarian unrest, modernisation, depopulation through emigration, and were at the same time perceived by Celtic Revivalists as sites where authentic ‘Irishness’ was preserved (Castle 2001; Felton 2007).

While illustrated periodicals have traditionally been identified with nation building, they had a transnational scope in terms of subject matter and they borrowed heavily from periodicals elsewhere: it was common that illustrations and texts (in translation) ‘travelled’ from one national context to another, being reprinted in periodicals elsewhere in Europe (Martin 2006:12). These transnational aspects can be demonstrated by looking at various mediations of ‘Connemara’ in, amongst others, Le Monde Illustré, Le Petit Journal, Bieszada Literacka, The Graphic, Harper’s Weekly, Hollandsche Illustratie, and Illustrated London News; mediations which show that paradigm shifts in thinking about regions in the past and present are called for. (Show less)

The first rise of the Finnish-language press in the 1850s was connected to the phenomenon of the letters to the newspapers. These readers’ letters were sent all over the country in the names of different local communities. During the 1850s and 1860s, the phenomenon evolved to a full-scale culture of local letters to newspapers. Because of the social and language circumstances of Finland, a large part of the writers of the readers’ letters was individuals who lived in the isolated local self-sufficient agrarian communities. This is why these letters are a good material to observe what happened, when one’s experiencing expanded from local to translocal.

The emerging translocality is linked to the change in human social interaction: The transition from local to translocal widened the communication beyond the traditional face-to-face communication. This changed the structure of human experiencing. Based on the John B. Thompson’s work, it could be argued that going beyond face-to-face communication meant the broadening of the sphere of experiencing from the lived experiencing only to the mediated experiencing. The spatiality of experiencing changed from local to translocal. On the present day’s perspective, this 19th century development is especially interesting, because of the changes that the development of the communication technology causes to the human social interaction in the digital age. Our experiencing is more and more translocal and mediated.

The Finnish Academy of Centre of Excellence in the history of experiences (HEX) has collected all “local letters to newspapers” from the digitalized Finnish-language press in the era of 1850 to 1870. The digital database Translocalis contains about 20 000 letters sent from different local communities of Finland and from abroad as well. The database enables the use of different methodologies of digital humanism and digital history - from data mining to historical mapping.

The database is suitable for studying the history of Finland but it could be applied also for broader perspectives. Because of the compactness of 19th century Finnish society and public sphere, Finland could be used as a case study for Western or global development. With the Translocalis Database, it is possible to make the cross-sections of societal development in the public sphere to observe the emerging of modernity into a society. The database enables both the micro level “history form below” and the macro level structural approach.

My paper analyses the culture of readers’ letters to newspapers in the mid-1800s Finland. Based on the Benedict Anderson’s idea of the nation as an imagined community, I will apply the Translocalis Database to study the experience of modern belonging using the mid-1800s Finland as a case to study the emerging of the notion of the modern communality. The basic assumption is that besides the nation, the imagined communality could be any other modern form of “translocal” communality, for example the society or a mass movement of the civil society. The objective of the study is to shed light on the mechanism that explains the emerging of the modern belonging at the societal level. (Show less)

Based on the analysis of the Gazeta de Lisboa, namely the about 11 800 issues published between 1715-1762 and 1778-1820, this papper aims to answer some key questions, of which some stand out: who are the promoters of the events? What audiences were present at the events? Which music/singers/composers are mentioned? Which places are mentioned? Which of those places survived the earthquake of 1755? Which musical genres are reported more often? Can we study musical tendencies from this periodical publication?
Artistic manifestations, namely music, are important indicators for the study of the centrality of certain political and social places, as well as to enlighten ways of social representation, like the sociability of the elites or the relation of a specific political and cultural place with others centers of artistic and cultural production. (Show less)

Throughout the nineteenth century, women began to become aware of gender, begin to address common problems that make public to know through the written press.

Numerous women's newspapers and magazines leave us testimony of what the vision and situation of women in society was like, most of the times treated as inferior beings with respect to men.

t the beginning of the century we find women on the battlefront against the French. They had become necessary in society. But when the war ends, you must retreat in its visibility and retreat into the domestic space and focus on caring for your husbands and families.

However, some women manage to make room and will voice the demands and demands of so many others who can not. We find ourselves with names like Emilia Pardo Bazán, Ángela Grassi, Frasquita Larrea, Cecilia Böhl de Faber, etc.

All of them analyze different aspects of women's needs, which allows us to take a tour of them by consulting said newspapers, which is the objective of this communication.

Sex, family, parenting, sewing, instruction. These are the most frequently discussed topics, sometimes accompanied by objects, such as figurines and special fashion pages, which accompany texts with advice for them, or accompany the pages of the generalist press, directed mainly for men, so that women entertain while their husbands read political and social news.

In addition, the editors and editors saw in the female audience a new source of income, for which they published magazines and women's newspapers. The objective was also to keep women entertained and not to get involved in men's affairs, such as political or economic issues. (Show less)